>> AOT - THE ARRAY OF THINGS (CITY OF CHICAGO)

It is great to see large cities get involved with the Internet of Things.

The Array of Things is a joint initiative lead by researchers from the Urban Center for Computation and Data of the Computational Institute, a joint initiative of the the Argonne National Laboratory and the University of Chicago together with the City of Chicago.

What if a light pole told you to watch out for an icy patch of sidewalk ahead? What if an app told you the most populated route for a late-night walk a specific location by itself? What if you could get weather and air quality information by block, instead of by city?
source: project website

The Array of Things is a network of interactive, modular sensor boxes that collect real-time data on the environment, infrastructure and activity for research and public use. Each sensor box monitors environment factors such as temperature, humidity, light, carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide levels and vibration amongst a few others.

Each node (specifications here) contain a master control processor (unspecified) sourcing information from at least two Arduino micro-controllers connected to a series of specific sensors and communicate over a cellular network to share information to the global network.

The initial deployment will involve the distribution of at least fifty nodes around the city to check system reliability and testing through the winter of 2014-15 - with the goal to obtain sufficient funding to deploy at least five hundred additional nodes during 2015 through 2017.

It will be interesting to follow up on how this project develops over time.